Critical Essay by G. J. Watson

SOURCE: "Chekhov and the Drama of Social Change: The Cherry Orchard," in Drama: An Introduction, St. Martin's Press, 1983, pp. 132-46.

In this essay, Watson examines a number of factors contributing to the life-like quality of The Cherry Orchard.

The Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, like Ibsen and Miller, is interested in man's relations with society—his last play, which might be regarded as his masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard, is a profound drama of social change. He is, however, a more 'open' dramatist than the other two. That is, Ibsen places a perhaps too insistent emphasis on the intractable nature of the opposition between individual aspiration and social constraints. His views are fixed: his protagonists must always, will always, be broken in their attempts at self-assertion. If there is a criticism of Ibsen's drama, it is that there is...